"Curse you! The man's a thief, I tell you. He's stolen my property! I demand my property—those collars there in his hand now. You're constable, you say. Well, I want my—"
He let himself down on the bench, as if the strength had left his knees.
"He's going to tell you lies," he cried. "He's making fools of you all with his—his—Duncan, boy! Don't listen to the black liar. He's going to try and make out 'twas me put the letter under the walk in Chestnut Street, up there to Infield; that it was me, all these years, that went back and got out money he put there. Me! Mate Snow. Duncan, boy; he's going to tell you a low, black-hearted lie!"
"How do you know?" That was all my cousin Duncan said.
To the dying man, nothing made much difference. It was as if he had only paused to gather his failing breath, and when he spoke his tone was the same, detached, dispassionate, with a ghost of humor running through it.
"How many times?" He counted the collars with a finger tip. "One two, tlee, six, seven time. Seven yeahs. Too bad. Any time Mista Minista wantee confessee, Mista God makee allee light. Mista Yen Sin allee same like Mista God. Wait. Wait. Wait. Laugh. Cly inside!"
Mate Snow was leaning forward on the bench in a queer, lazy attitude, his face buried in his hands and his elbows propped on his knees. But no one looked at him, for Minister Malden was speaking in the voice of one risen from the dead, his eyes blinking at the Chinaman's lamp.
"Then you mean—you mean that he—isn't alive? After all? That he wasn't alive—then? You mean it was all a—a kind of a—joke? I—I—Oh, Mate! Mate Snow!"
It was queer to see him turning with his news to his traditional protector. It had been too sudden; his brain had been so taken up with the naked miracle that Gibbs was not alive that all the rest of it, the drawn-out and devious revenge of the druggist, had somehow failed to get into him as yet.
"Mate Snow!" he cried, running over to the sagging figure. "Did you hear, Mate? Eh? It isn't true! It was all a—a joke, Mate!" He shook Snow's shoulder with a pleading ecstasy. "It's been a mistake, Mate, and I am—she is—little Hope is—"